Lord of Six Kingdoms
by SarellaMartell
Summary: The absent and estranged Targaryen Queen's loyalties are still in question when news of rebellion in the Reach reaches her Lannister king.


_This short fic is part of a larger, ongoing narrative taking place in an A Song of Ice and Fire Roleplay. If you're interested in joining the story, you can create a character in Westeros or Essos on reddit at /r/gameofthronesrp. Thanks for reading!_

**Lord of Six Kingdoms**

Damon sat on the floor with his back against the wall, panting. Three headed dragons stitched in crimson thread roared defiantly all around him on their black banners, as dazzling as they were frightening, and the beaten silver mirrors behind the torches of the Queen's ballroom reflected them a hundred times over. He pushed back his hair and wiped the sweat from his forehead.

_A hundred dragons. I don't even know what to do about one._

Widow's Wail was resting across his lap, the child of Ice, its ripples of red and obsidian steel even more impressive in the dancing light of the ballroom's candles. _"Like waves of night and blood upon some steely shore."_

He looked up at the Targaryen banners, and they seemed to agree. _Fire and blood._

There had been a certain urgency added to his trainings with Ser Ryman since the Hand's Feast. War was coming. Whether Damon wanted to admit it aloud or not, they both knew it, and so did everyone on the Small Council. Ryman and Damon met every single evening in the ballroom at whatever hour the King decided, be that the hour of the Wolf, the Owl, or the Bat.

The knight's squire was present on this late night, the stocky lad with the straw colored hair and piercing blue eyes. At first, Damon insisted on privacy when he met with Ser Ryman to train in the Queen's Ballroom, but as their lessons progressed and he grew more confident in his ability to not utterly humiliate himself, he cared less about an audience.

Besides, the boy could help carry armor and the other weapons Ryman had the King practice with, as well as drink for when they were finished. He may not have had a say in the hour they would practice in, but Ser Ryman was at least able to convince Damon that his insistence on only using a sword and shield was as much foolishness as it was stubbornness.

Ser Ryman was sweating as well, though he seemed less breathless than the King. He walked over to where Damon sat and held out a flask for him.

"I always drink after a fight. Before one, too, for luck or for courage. Sometimes both." Ser Ryman spoke slowly, his voice calm and steady, his words always deliberate. He was unlike his King in that regard, who had never held a station in life that required him to also hold his tongue.

Damon shook his head. "The Crone shunned me when I was born, Ser Ryman, giving me none of her wisdom. I'm afraid I have to keep what little wits I've got about me at all times."

Ser Ryman did not press the matter. He set the wineskin on the floor and began to unfasten his own gardbraces, as Damon's gaze wandered about the room. _The Queen's room._

His legs ached and his arms more so, but most of all it was his head that hurt. He nodded in the direction of the squire. "That's your boy, isn't it?"

Ser Ryman glanced over at Robert, lazily collecting the pieces of a chair that had fallen victim to a misplaced sword blow at some point in their sparring. He paused for a moment in hesitation, before nodding his head slowly in reluctant admittance. "Aye."

"How old is he?"

"Ten and five," Ryman answered.

"Does he want to become a knight, then? When he's older? Is that his boyhood fantasy?"

"I... I suppose so, Your Grace."

"You ought to teach your son some sense. Send him to the Citadel, or have him pick up a septon's staff, or even a plow. Anything would be better than this." Damon leaned his head back against the wall and closed his eyes, exhaling deeply. "Though I suppose if he joins the Kingsguard someday, at least he won't have to marry."

Ser Ryman glanced back to his son, pulling a splinter from his finger and muttering under his breath, oblivious to his father's conversation with the King.

"Your white cloak forbids you from fathering children," Damon said, sounding bored. "Are all men's vows such horseshit?"

The door to the ballroom swung open before the knight could reply, groaning on its iron hinges, and a small silhouette in the threshold cast a long shadow across the floor. When Damon opened his eyes and looked over, the figure was running towards him and the low light of the torches revealed the bright yellow sigil on his breast and the blue bantam rooster of House Swyft.

"Your Grace!" he called as he ran, "Your Grace, a letter!"

Ser Ryman tensed, and even Robert paused in the middle of his work to look over at the page. A letter delivered straight to the King's hands in the dead of the night... _Dark wings, dark words._

Damon straightened somewhat, but did not move from the floor as the boy approached and stuck his hand out, letter grasped tightly in his small fist. "The Grand Maester wanted me to bring it to you at once, Your Grace."

Damon exchanged a hesitant glance with Ser Ryman before taking the crumpled parchment from the boy and smoothing it out. His green eyes darted over the words quickly and a tense silence hung in ballroom. The Swyft lad struggled to catch his breath and Robert wandered over curiously. Ser Ryman did not even notice his nosy bastard, so fixated was he on the letter in the King's hands.

_Dark wings, dark words, in the dead of night..._

Damon stood slowly, holding his sword by the pommel and keeping his gaze trained on the wrinkled parchment. "Summon the Small Council," he mumbled quietly.

"Pardon, Your Grace? I did not-"

"The Small Council," Damon repeated, more loudly this time. "Get the Small Council. The Grand Maester, Eon Crakehall, Aemon Estermont, Royce and Connington, Lord Arryn. Pull them from their bloody beds if you have to._Now._"

He thrust the letter into Ser Ryman's hands. "Gylen," he said. "_King_ Gylen."

_Damon Lannister is played by /u/lannaport and Ser Ryman is played by /u/gotrpthrowaway1_


End file.
